Jay Williams

["Berry, Mark S" <berrym@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

His name has come up a few times as a potential point guard target for the
Celtics, and it makes sense. The Bulls have two point guards, Williams and
Jamaal Crawford, and Crawford seemed to seize the position late last season.
The Bulls seem to be in the market for a star, but might settle for Antoine
(cheap shot). 

Anyway, I was curious, so I looked up his stats during his disappointing
rookie season. I was surprised at how decent they were for someone so
"disappointing." 

Williams averaged 26 minutes per game. I those 26 minutes, he scored 9.5
points per game and dished out 4.7 assists. By contrast, Antoine, our de
facto point guard, averaged 4.8 assists in 41 minutes per game. Williams
shot 40 percent from the field---not good, but better than Antoine's 38
percent. And considerably better when contrasted with other players at their
positions. Williams shot 33 percent on 3-pointers, better than Antoine's 32
percent. He shot 64 percent from the free throw line-considered his Achilles
heel, yet still better than Antoine's 61 percent. If you project his stats
out over 48 minutes, you actually only lose about 4 points per game compared
to Antoine-and you pick up the assists and everything from Williams.

Williams struggled to adjust to the triangle offense. He struggled being a
rookie point guard. But he was disappointing only in relation to
expectations, which were unreasonably high when he came out of Duke. No one
knows if the Bulls are going to trade him, but if they are, and if the
Celtics are serious about finally finding their point guard, they could do a
lot worse. An Antoine for Williams, Fizer and Eddie Robinson trade works per
RealGM, and probably is pretty fair for both teams. If you could finagle a
swap of draft picks, even better. But Williams would give the Celts their
point guard, Fizer would give them a stopgap option at power forward and
Robinson would add athleticism off the bench and eventually as a replacement
for EWill. The Bulls get Antoine, who they could play alongside Chandler at
forward, since Chandler gives you the kind of length and athleticism to
handle the toughest opposing forward defensively.

Obviously, it's just speculation, but I think this would be a great step for
the Celts. They'd need to address the frontcourt either in the draft of free
agency, but this would be a nice start.

Mark